This year’s 2022 Winter Showcase auction will feature, among a bevy of other numismatic treasures, more than 100 physical cryptocurrency coins of different compositions and designs, issued offering various producers and series. Stack’s Bowers Galleries has been selling physical cryptocurrencies for over a year.
Our first sale of physical cryptocurrency was in November 2021 when an unredeemed 2013 Lealana 0.1 Bitcoin sold for $33,600. It was struck on a 25 mm planchet by Northwest Territorial Mint and contained a quarter of an ounce of .9999 fine silver. Two thousand of these 0.1 Bitcoin were struck.
When a physical cryptocurrency coin’s holographic sticker is removed, allowing its owner to access the code to redeem the cryptocurrency, the coin is said to have been “peeled.” Both peeled and unpeeled coins have been offered. At the time of its sale, the 0.1 Bitcoin’s “peel value” was about $5,400.
In the past year, 82 pieces of yhysical cryptocurrency has been offered in Stack’s Bowers Galleries sales in the last year, realizing more than $1.6 million.
The Winter 2022 Showcase Auction will include by far our largest offering of physical cryptocurrency coins yet – 104 pieces including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero, and Dogecoin cryptocurrencies. Popular series such as Casascius, Lealana, BTCC, Microsoul, MoonBits, Satori, Crypto Imperator, Denarium, and Titan Mint are among those found in the sale. Seventy-two of the offered coins have not yet been peeled. The upcoming sale will surely attract the attention of those interested in cryptocurrency history, especially the history of its physical coins.
One notable piece in the upcoming sale is an unpeeled “Gold Rim” Series 3 Casascius 1 Bitcoin coin. Struck on a one-ounce silver planchet, this coin has surfaces that “are brilliant and virtually flawless, boasting intense luster and sharp reflectivity on both sides.” Series 3, the final Casascius series, produced in 2013, is popular with collectors.
